


Talk of Virtue, Talk of Sin

by tingodvons



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 20:04:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1562366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tingodvons/pseuds/tingodvons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’re attracted to him in the worst possible way. It’s nothing like your attraction to Bucky, but with this new not-Bucky you find yourself grasping at loose strings. You keep going after him, but he always gets to you first, it’s a giant game of cat and mouse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Talk of Virtue, Talk of Sin

1.) You’re strength and muscle to them, biceps without a brain. You’re a fist and a shield, an icon for the world to look up to, and that’s what keeps bread on the table and an apartment downtown. You’re sent on missions and you do your job, you keep people safe, you punch the bad guys in the jaw and in the stomach and it’s the same old routine. You’re a soldier. You’re expected to follow orders mindlessly and not question them, and smile your way through it all, justice incarnate and all that. Too bad for them you’ve got a brain, and you may be a super soldier but you’re also a person with suspicions and feelings and regret and distrust. And it’s just damn too bad the people who have you runnin’ around are people you have that distrust towards, cause that’s what puts bread on the table.

 

2.) It’s odd that the person you find yourself trusting is the one person you shouldn’t trust at all, but in the end you realize they’re the only person who doesn’t treat you with such fragility. You may be wide shoulders and have a signature shield, but everyone treads around you so lightly you want to scream sometimes. Do you want help with that touch screen phone, Captain? Do you want help with that computer, Captain? Do you want help using the goddamn television, Captain? So really, when you ally yourself with the one person who no one seems to fully trust, and they treat you like the muscle and brawn and brains you really are, you find yourself trusting them more than you probably should. But Natasha is a good person at heart, you like to think, so she won’t let you down during missions. Hopefully. 

 

3.) The Winter Soldier is supposed to be a myth, a ghost, and all you get is a glimpse of him on the rooftop, but it’s enough for you to be hit with the realization that he, they, _it_ isn’t a person anymore. The eyes and gaze he holds is too cold to be human, too cold and empty to be full of any emotion. You find yourself thinking about that gaze for a long time, how calculating it seemed and how brutal it felt to be caught in that crossfire. He follows orders, you tell yourself. He’s a soldier in the truest sense. And it scares you down to your very soul. 

 

4.) When you fight with the Winter Soldier it’s-- different. You aren’t expecting it. Most fights are what they are: _fights_. You punch, they dodge, you throw the shield, they’re rendered useless. A few explosives thrown here and there, but it is what it is and you have it down to a science almost, just like punching stage Hitler in the jaw a thousand times over. With the Winter Soldier, though, it’s less of a fight than it is a dance. Hand to hand combat has never felt so alive, not since the 40s when you were fresh at it. You sidestep while he steps forward, eyes cold. You throw your weight into an attack, and he gracefully accepts it and throws it back. You push, he pushes back. You fear for your life. You don’t know if--how--you’re going to win this. It’s exhilarating. Until the mask comes off.

 

5.) James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes had been your best friend since the first time he stepped into a fight for you. He had been your best friend the days you were down on your luck, the days you needed someone to lean on, no matter how much you refused it. He had been your best friend the day he got put into the army and you didn’t, the four times you had been rejected, and the fifth time you were accepted. You had grown up with him, always falling into step next to him, always trying to keep up. Secretly, he had been more than your best friend: kisses in the night, sharing beds, all hidden behind closed doors. You knew what every inch of him looked like, if only from the amount of times you had patched each other up after brawls. You had seen him tortured, bruised, but not broken. You had seen him in war. You had seen him being a soldier, following orders, even following _your_ orders. But you had never seen him as this, a soldier in the truest sense as you had seen on the roof, as you see him now saying, “Who the hell is Bucky?”

 

6.) You start looking for him in the beginning, with Sam, contacting Natasha when you needed to, but everywhere you go is a dead end. He was in your life for 20 years, then he was gone for 70, and then he was back for a full twenty minutes in total, and now he’s gone. He’s a ghost in every way possible, and you try to follow his footsteps, but they’re basically wisps of smoke that you can barely grasp between your fingers. The first time you actually catch him, corner him against the wall of a back alley, saying, “Bucky--hey, Buck,” he immediately pushes back, and then it’s a fistfight. He gets a few good punches on you before you’re tackled to the ground, knife at your throat, knees on the side of your hips, hot breath on your face. You know ( _hope_ ) he won’t finish you off, but then the knife is jammed into the pavement next to your head and a pair of lips are slammed to yours. He grabs your collar and pulls you up and his tongue is pushed into your mouth. Your stomach churns slightly and you push back into the kiss, hands grasping at his hair. Then he slams you back down, head knocking against the pavement hard enough you see stars. You’re half hard in your jeans when he growls, “Quit following me,” and then he’s gone like the ghost he is. 

 

7.) You’re attracted to him in the worst possible way. It’s nothing like your attraction to Bucky, but with this new not-Bucky you find yourself grasping at loose strings. You keep going after him, but he always gets to you first, it’s a giant game of cat and mouse. The second, third, fourth, fifth times you get close, he’s always there behind corners and in alleyways, waiting for you to spot him and make the first move. And it’s always the same thing that happens then: brief fistfight, a broken nose or extremely bruised, fist shaped marks in the walls from his bionic arm, then you’re grabbed by the collar and slammed against the nearest surface, and he’s making out with you. His knee pressed up into your groin, tongue in your mouth, and a hand grasped in your hair tight enough to hurt. Every time the interactions get lengthier and lengthier, and each time you try to hold onto him tighter, hoping he’ll remember who the hell Bucky, who the hell he is, who the hell you are. But something always makes him let go first, make him pull away and stare back at you with a look you’ve been trying to decipher for _ages_ : whether it’s recognition, or confusion, or pity, the only thing you can make out that’s concrete is lust. You’re pretty sure you return that every time. But it all ends the same, with him slamming you back onto the wall and then running off, leaving you hard in your pants and bruised enough that you feel it the next day. You keep going after him, but what for at this point you aren’t quite sure. 

 

8.) Months later, he comes to you first. You’re in your apartment --fifth floor, one bedroom one bath, simple and fits your needs-- when he enters through the window, silent enough that you don’t hear him. You find him sitting on your bed, and you immediately go into a defensive pose, centering your gravity and waiting to see what he’ll do. But when he looks up at you, you see something familiar, something warm, something lost. Something _Bucky_. So you stand up a little straighter. “I’m not Bucky,” he says, and something sinks inside you. “But I don’t know who I am.” You ask him why he’s in your apartment, and he doesn’t respond. You hesitantly move to sit next to him, not too close but not outside of arm’s length either. And then he says, “Tell me about him.” 

 

9.) You probably shouldn’t be housing a trained assassin that’s a brainwashed version of your best friend, but it just ends up happening. He’ll disappear for days at a time, only to come back looking distraught and lost. So you keep letting him stay. You learn the boundaries of him being there-- your first mistake was calling him Bucky, which had ended in a fistfight and him leaving for a full three weeks. Your second mistake had been asking him where he went when he disappeared, which _also_ lead to a fight fist (which, you should really be getting to patching the holes in the wall he had made). You learn to move around each other, talking when he wants to (usually about Bucky, which gets hard when you try to keep it in third person), silent cooperation when he doesn’t, and some making out when it permits. It’s not like you two ended up being there at the same time much anyway, which was a blessing and a bit of a curse. But you make it work. Sometimes you can still pretend it’s you and Bucky living together in your ratty 40s apartment that had no heating and only two rooms (kitchen and bedroom, which you both shared). You don’t let yourself get caught up in that fantasy too much, but it helps. It definitely helps. 

 

10.) Four months after he first showed up, something shifts. You’re in the kitchen, making a sandwich, and he walks behind you to get something from the fridge, and you sense him peering over your shoulder. And then he laughs and says, “What, you don’t cut the crust off your sandwiches anymore, Steve?” You freeze, swallow, and the silence becomes thick between you two. You put the spreading knife down, and turn to him. He’s standing there, eyes wide slightly like he doesn’t know what he just said, looking more scared and defenseless than you had seen him in-- ever. You want to ask _you remember? You remember that, Bucky?_ but the words are too stuck in your throat, so you-- you just reach up, hands soft cupping his face, and lean down slightly to kiss him. He kisses you back immediately. It’s soft, tender, and it’s just like the way Bucky used to kiss you that you push closer slightly, trying to convey all your emotions in to this one press of lips. But then he shoves back, and the defenselessness is gone, only the cold soldier you were so familiar with, and he makes a dash for the window. And goes straight through it, broken glass and all.

 

11.) He’s gone for an entire month then, but you’re not alone. You keep the windows and doors unlocked (seriously, you did not want another broken window, just in case) for him to come back, but he doesn’t. You don’t tell Sam about it, since he never knew that he-- Bucky, the Winter Soldier, whoever _he_ was at this point-- was staying in your apartment. Sam’s a little suspicious when you call off the search, but he doesn’t pry too much into your reasoning. He does, however, make a point to visit you on a daily basis, and you make sure to hang out with him as often as possible. And then one night, you’re in bed, almost asleep, when you feel the covers pull back. You tense up, the bed dips, and a warm arm wraps over you. You feel hot breath against the back of your neck, and a voice murmurs, “Go back to sleep, Steve.” The phrase was so familiar, something Bucky would say to you when he came home late, knowing you were a light sleeper. You sigh, smile slightly, and fall asleep next to Bucky.

 

12.) It’s not easy. He’s Bucky, but he’s not. There are moments when he’s the Winter Soldier, disappearing for a few days, but he always returns with a warm, tired smile. And you can deal with that, because it feels as close to normal as it can get. He’s Bucky, sass and charm and strong willed, just like always. He has trouble remembering things, sometimes, not able to distinguish between Winter Soldier memories and Bucky Barnes ones. He keeps a gun under his pillow, always slightly wary of everything, and you don’t really blame him. He has nightmares, and you just have to take the risk to wake him up and immediately get in a brawl with him to help him fight out of it. It’s a work in progress, like it always will be, but you can live with it. You can definitely live with it. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> title of "Gone, I'm Gone" from Hadestown


End file.
